Our lives can change in an instant. One minute we’re going about our day, doing our best to raise good children and carve out a career, when an alternate path appears. One simple choice and we end up lost in a dark world.
Raylynn Van Oort was eating with her young daughter at a Helena McDonald’s in late 1987 when a charismatic minister strolled in with a small, well-dressed entourage. They locked eyes and the new arrival sat down next to the 31-year-old mother, introduced his wife, discovered that he was Van Oort’s cousin by marriage and suggested she might run his gubernatorial campaign.
Van Oort had lost her father to a car crash at two years old and his replacement, her stepfather Jeff, had been an unyielding drill sergeant who eviscerated her self-worth to the point that she got straight A’s out of fear before becoming promiscuous (“‘Don’t say no’ was deeply embedded in my brain, held me prisoner,” she writes). She married and soon divorced a cold man who left her with a lovely daughter to raise on her own while struggling to launch an events business.
